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Topic: Hive with plenty of room but pulling several queen cell off the bottom of frames (Read 422 times)

Located in eastern KY. I have plenty of drawn frame and brood frames to work with so should I make the split and take the chance? With each frame containing queen cells what should be included in the nuc boxes? Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.

I have six strong double deep 10 frame boxes to pull from along with four double deep nucs that are starting to look like they will be large enough for wintering... Thanks

I dug in to this hive tonight and found there was no queen. Must be a recent loss since there is some larger larva present along with capped worker bees. There is only a few drone cells so a laying worker is not something I suspect. I pulled a half drawn frame with pollen, a frame of honey that was being capped, a brood frame and a frame with five or six queen cells out to a nuc box. If the queen never makes it back or fails I can always populate a couple weak nucs with these bees anyway. Will update later.... Maybe lol

Sounds like a plan. The only problem now is TIME! The queens will probably have time to mate in KY, but there isn’t much time after that for winter bee brood cycles. Always interesting to see just how far the bees can be pushed and survive. Keep us posted.

I only find the queen about 1 in 20 times. Even in KY it isn't the best time to be removing and redistributing frames around in your hives, as your bees prepare for winter. Do you have any flows yet to come? Were your boxes stuck together pretty good w/ propolis?

Your Queen ("if" already hatched out) can take a bit to come back mated (more if drones are scarce) if she's lucky, and then its another month before you begin seeing any results (eggs), but what if a virgin wasn't in there? What if your bees had to change directions and create a queen? That takes even longer. Much to consider this time of year unless you live in the tropics ;)